Hey, #cooking friends.

My wife has a habit that has never made sense to me: when she starts cooking on the stove, she often adds the first-step ingredients (like garlic, onion, etc.) to the cold pan with the oil, then heats them up together. This is in contrast to my approach, which is to heat the pan and oil and then add ingredients.

This goes against all my "this is how Cooking is done" senses, but I've realized I don't have a solid, fact-based argument as to why one should heat the oil first. I could probably sputter something about absorbing oil and cooking at a consistent temperature, but it's not exactly a very honed argument.

Is there such a reason?

I want to find #gamedesign resources for designing the artificial, algorithmic systems that govern a computer opponent's decision-making.

For as long as I've kniwn these have been known collectively as "AI", as in "pathfinding AI" or "enemy AI", and, well, you can see what my problem is in 2026.

The build is successful!

I finally finished* my TagTuner music jukebox and hooked it up to some speakers. It uses the ESPHome-based Home Assistant Voice PE as its brains and audio player, and when it scans NFC tags, it fetches corresponding media from my Music Assistant server.

I still have a couple bugs to work out, but this is definitely close enough to feel "ready".

I'm so happy to have a tool that will let us both (a) leverage my large home media server and (b) enjoy some of the benefits of physical media.

#physicalmedia #ESP32 #homeassistant #musicassistant #diy

sorry, this one's stuck in my head so y'all are getting it too

#music

Ants In My Room (Lyric Video)

Stream "Ants In My Room": https://cartervail.lnk.to/ants My New EP “Coydog” is out now!Stream It Here: https://cartervail.lnk.to/coydogCheck out my merch he...

^YouTube

I learned in the last year or so that I have a real fondness for folk, rebel, punk, and protest songs, especially in this moment. Music brings solidarity, not just with the people singing today, but with those who marched and fought before me, and I need that right now.

Maybe you do too. So I'm gonna start a thread here of songs and artists I find that resonate with me.

Today was going to be the day. The last shipment of parts arrived yesterday, so I was finally ready to assemble the TagTuner this morning. I'd spent a year or more procrastinating, several weeks beating my head against failed 3D prints, and another week sanding and staining the lid. I was honestly a little giddy when I tucked into bed last night.

And I got it almost all assembled, all the components into the 3D-printed case. All I had to do was put the lid, so carefully post-processed, on and fasten it.

It broke.

Three of the lid's four legs snapped off in the housings they were supposed to sit in. Superglue couldn't save them.

So it's back to the printer. And then the garage. And maybe by the end of the week I'll have a lid that will actually fit without breaking.

I came across #pico8 last night and it looks delightful.

I don't need any more hobbies right now, I really don't, but gosh, it's tempting to tinker with game development.

PICO-8 Fantasy Console

PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs.

^{www.lexaloffle.com}

Ugh, I should really get back to practicing #lockpicking.

I was very gung-ho about it for a little bit, but then what always happens happened: it got tough (couldn't quite get the hang of feeling around the lock's guts, didn't know what I was doing wrong) and I got overwhelmed and dropped it.

But I want to have that skill at least somewhat developed.

It is annoying how frequently the solution to my weird avoidant mental blocks is to just talk to somebody about it.

I could save myself a lot of headache if I could just remember this fact and use it as a frontline response when I notice I'm spiraling and avoiding.

Finished The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.

This is possibly the most important book I've read in the last ten years.

What a brilliant, thorough exploration of this particular monster, how it grew, and what exactly we stand to lose if we don't check its power.

I'm stuck in #3Dprinting hell, trying to tweak printer settings just right so that the wood PLA I'm using will actually stick to the bed as soon as it extrudes instead of dragging for an inch or two before adhering. I've tried a clean bed, gluestick on the bed, increasing the first layer temperature, decreasing the first layer speed... there is so much spaghetti at the wall, and very little of it is sticking. Metaphorically and literally.

I just need this print to work, and then this project I've wanted to complete for over a year will be nearly done—but I'm going cross-eyed trying to get this right.

Because I'm a big nerd, I just wrote a whole-ass review of why this month's Item-of-the-Month in Kingdom of Loathing falls so flat for me.

#KingdomOfLoathing

December 2025 IotM Review: Dry Bones

The Skeleton of Crimbo Past offers unparalleled riches. So why isn't it fun?

^{Spencer Dub (Key and Card)}

Wake Up Dead Man.

Wow.

This is the cutest dang thing, oh my god

#3dprinting

Owlbox - RFID tag speaker for kids - Phoniebox by xtract MakerWorld: Download Free 3D Models

Owlbox: A Robust, Smart RFID Music Player for Kids (Phoniebox)Tired of screens? The Owlbox is a DIY, screen-free jukebox that's tough enough for toddlers and smart enough for your connected home.

^{makerworld.com}

I can't go to the restroom in a public entertainment venue like a concert hall or auditorium anymore without thinking about the vast disparity between toilet facilities per square foot in sex-segregated "women's" restrooms vs. "men's".

If you are a cis man who uses urinals, I encourage you to ask yourself, every time you're standing at a wall of urinals, how many toilet stalls would fit in the same space. Keep that in mind when you see the long line for the other restroom.

I'm excited about this one. Mended a small hole in my jeans using a Speedweve pocket loom I got a couple years ago. It's not perfect, but it works, and I have ideas about how to do better next time. Not bad for a first go.

#mending #visiblemending

Did anyone else who grew up in a house with carpeted floors like to rub their hands across the carpet very fast and feel how simultaneously smooth and tingly they felt afterwards?

Or was that just me?

I had to go unsubscribe from one of the streaming services—Glorp, I think, or maybe Jarbo—because I had used a free trial to watch the first two #Mariners games of the #ALCS.

First, I went to my TV's settings, but couldn't find an unsubscribe option, so I logged into my Treepy account on my desktop. But the unsubscribe option wasn't there, so I was redirected back to Roku, where I finally found the option to "turn off auto-renew". Not "cancel", though. "Turn off auto-renew."

And, it seems straightforward enough, and perhaps it is, but trying to navigate corporate websites in 2025 feels a bit like negotiating with a powerful and tricky genie. I'm staring down these subscription pages, trying to ensure I've done the right things so that I'm not going to get charged ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND NINETY-NINE CENTS in 24 hours.

Even when companies aren't using dark patterns, the general proliferation of dark patterns just leaves me jumpy and suspicious. So glad it's the future.

So, I was eyeing the Murena Fairphone 6 for my next smartphone, in an effort to #degoogle.

However, Google's latest fuckery with developer verification, and the apparent death knell it represents for F-Droid, makes me uncertain. I don't have the technical understanding of how the pieces fit together with alternative versions of Android.

Can someone more knowledgeable than me weigh in here? How is Google's developer verification for Android likely to affect alternative Android versions like /e/OS?

#Android #degoogling #fairphone

Murena Fairphone (Gen. 6)

THE MURENA FAIRPHONE (GEN. 6) WILL BE SHIPPED IN SEPTEMBER ! Brand new deGoogled Murena Fairphone (Gen. 6) ! The Murena Fairphone (Gen.

^{Murena - deGoogled phones and services}

The opening paragraph of this essay is so sharp it makes me jealous. Just trying to corral the words to describe what I like about it feels like I'm chasing a gaggle of runaway toddlers on trikes, while Burneko launches his motorcycle off a ramp, winks, and flips me off.

The first sentence is just such a clean, economical expression of contempt, and it sets the tone for the whole piece. Confident, clever writing like that always makes me think of Douglas Adams. If I have any writing goals, it's to write like that.

Only Kevin Roose's Editors Despise Him More Than I Do | Defector

Grave editorial failure only seldom can be located in something as precise as a single word choice. The following block-quoted sentence, from a Thursday article by New York Times technology reporter Kevin Roose, contains one, and it feels like journa…

^defector.com

HOT DAMN MUÑOZ THAT CATCH

#Mariners

I am adept at assembling flat-pack furniture. I have good enough visual-spatial reasoning, and I pay attention to details in the instructions enough that I'm rarely caught flat-footed.

And with that said, I believe that somehow, the design of IKEA furniture acts as arcane DRM, because there is there is no way on this green planet that even the most talented human being can assemble a thirdhand IKEA bed without wanting to scream for days.

Threat to free speech: People booing my "edgy" transphobic jokes

Not a threat to free speech: A government that brutally tortures and murders critics

Cowards and sellouts, the lot of them.

US comedians defend decision to play in Saudi Arabia: ‘They’re paying me enough to look the other way’

Usual supporters of free speech are under fire for signing on to Riyadh festival despite the government’s human rights abuses

^{Guardian staff reporter (The Guardian)}

note on a front door in Seattle, written in a child's hand:

"sorry, we're DEAD"

A+ Halloween decor, kiddo. I'm spooked.

The ESPN commentary on today's #Mariners game is absolutely horrendous.

They spent almost the entirety of Josh Naylor's at-bat cut away to the announcers booth where the Astros mascot was bringing them food. Because who wants to watch the ballgame, am I right? 🙄

I missed the end of the #Mariners game last night due to extreme sleepiness, but it was the middle of the 11th when I went to bed and things weren't looking good.

So when R came to bed, I asked, half-asleep and pessimistically, if we had lost.

What a nice surprise.